NHS: Faith Healer required

Thankfully I don’t work within NHS. I have enormous respect and sympathy those people working hard to maintain the level of frontline services that an increasingly “sick” UK society needs.

But I cannot avoid the obvious conclusion that, contrary to what is reported below, the NHS is and has been for some time on, financial, life support. It isn’t “clinically dead” but it is and will continue to be too frail to operate on for as long as treatment is limited to treating symptoms and managing pain…

The NHS could reach “breaking point” within the next few years due to increasing demands on services, senior doctors have warned. The UK’s Royal College of Physicians said that financial pressures may mean junior doctors are not given training posts within the NHS, while the overall number of places at medical school could also drop. At the same time, their report said that medical services across the UK were facing extra burdens including limits on how many hours doctors can work, more hospital admissions and people living longer than ever before.

The doctors warned that services dedicated to looking after very ill people were facing particular strain. About 3,800 NHS jobs are set to go this year across Scotland, but unions have warned that relying on staff turnover to reduce numbers means some vital staff risk not being replaced. The latest warnings came in the annual census of members by the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians (RCP) of the UK, which includes the organisations in Glasgow and Edinburgh. (Scotsman page 2,